An Asian Citizen's Center for Environment and Health deputy holds a one-man protest in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 23, 2013, to demand that more be done to stop smog from China polluting Korea's air. / Korea Times file

While China and Korea experience some of the world's worst air pollution, they are yet to develop credible technological methods to monitor and analyze what is in the harmful particulates.

Scientists and policymakers from the two countries have met over the issue since the early 2000s. But without precise readings on the pollutants ― from total suspended particles such as fine dust and ultrafine dust to chemicals like nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide ― the experts haven't progressed further than sharing damage reports and reminding each other of the problem's gravity.

But more imminent non-environmental issues ― North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, the South's import of an American missile defense system that has angered China and Beijing's economic retaliation against Korean firms ― have largely overshadowed bilateral talks.

Korean scientists are wary of the political race that delays what has become an environmental bottleneck. Without an effective joint effort, the problem cannot be resolved.

ACEN CEO Song Hee-nam

"China is one of the few countries in the world that skipped building landlines for the internet and went straight to launching the service wireless, a fundamental infrastructure for the now-dominant Internet of Things (IoT) technologies," said Song Hee-nam, CEO of ACEN, a Suwon-based air pollution analyzer and gas monitoring system developer.

"With the head start, China has already built many data-sharing platforms, including air analyzers. But because of their lack of a technological edge, their readings' accuracy is not reliable, even to the Chinese. So it's hard to detect the exact constituents of polluted air in real time."

One of the most effective ways to read air quality precisely across broad areas is to erect more monitoring equipment. Preparation for this is not fully fledged in China and is also far from effective in Seoul, where there are monitors in selective public areas ― like school and community center rooftops. But they cannot give accurate readings for wide areas.

Koreans who don't trust the air-quality readings government-run smartphone apps provide, or the displays near bus stops, call themselves "environmental nomads" and have taken the matter into their own hands. Many carry a portable monitor or install a public monitor in their residential communities.

"President Moon Jae-in said he will spend 50 billion won ($44 million) in installing air analyzers at 11,000 schools nationwide, but equipment accuracy is questionable," said Song.

"The biggest problem is unreliable data. Sadly, the two countries' technologies cannot catch up with people's demand for credible data."

Korea and China have been regularly discussing air pollution problems but have never agreed to put anything practical into action.

In June, an environment forum in the Korean city of Suwon invited Korea's Gyeonggi Province and three Chinese provinces, Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin. But most of the one-day meeting involved government authorities and environmental scientists from each province reporting what their region has done to prevent air pollution. A sign of synergy to suggest initiatives and tackle the issue together wasn't there.

Gyeonggi Research Institute's senior researcher of air-quality management Kim Dong-young said scholastic meetings between two nations on air pollution have been "by no means innovative."

Gyeonggi Research Institute's senior researcher Kim Dong-young

"While two nations agree on scientific grounds, it's difficult to move on to policymaking because environmental disputes on national levels trigger diplomatic issues," said Kim, who was one of the forum's presenters. "Korea, whose diplomatic power is far weaker than China, must empower its standing with stronger research, including not just air-quality readings but statistics like the location of industrial compounds in detail, their operating energy resources and the constituents and volumes of their emissions."

Korea's National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) has been conducting the Long-range Transport Project, a study of the movement of harmful particulates, for over a decade. But Kim said the project has always lacked sufficient empirical data, which can "only be solved by expanding research to a bigger scale."

"The biggest eco-friendly project Korea has ever accomplished was investing 3 trillion won ($2.7 billion) on introducing diesel particulate filters (DPF) to reduce vehicle emissions," Kim said. "It was one of the very few effective methods out of some 60 ideas proposed so far to prevent air pollution."

Korea's sluggish drive to deal with air pollution is in contrast to China's aggressive eco-friendly investment. In its 13th Five-Year Plan, introduced in 2016, China said it will spend about 400 trillion won solely on improving air quality, an amount similar to Korea's entire annual budget. One of the biggest initiatives in the plan is to cut volatile organic compound emissions.

"In 10 years, China will make a visible improvement with air pollution," said Kim, one of those examining the feasibility of Gyeonggi Province's cloud-seeding experiment in 2017-18 as a possible method to reduce fine dust. He is skeptical of the test, considering the provincial government's puny funding of 20 billion won.

People wear gas masks in Beijing on Dec. 8, 2015, when the city issued a red-alert for air pollution caused by smog. / Yonhap

Chinese impact on Korean air

In a rare joint air-quality analysis in 2016 ― by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Korea's NIER, called "KORUS-Air Quality" ― China's contribution to Korean air pollution was found to be over 50 percent on average. The analysis showed that the higher the air pollution level was in Korea, the more Chinese impact there was ― up to 80 percent.

"The KORUS-AQ analysis was conducted from May to June, when China doesn't normally need household heating that produces lots of fine dust," Song said. "In October, Chinese cities with the highest population density like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianzin and Guangzhou burn coal to provide household heating. People also incinerate chemical materials used in farming like discarded vinyl. These activities worsen the air-quality index up to 500 micrograms per cubic meter. Particulates produced from the activities drift to Korea by riding westerly or northwesterly winds."

But not just climatic conditions have an influence. Geographical features of the two countries also influence the Chinese effect on Korean air pollution. While mountainous regions form western China and eastern Korea, there is low terrain in eastern China and western Korea, which allows air pollution from China to cross the Yellow Sea.

Not competition but cooperation

ACEN's air analyzer model AMS-2000 at a pig farm entrance in Hallim county, Jeju City in Jeju Island. / Courtesy of ACEN

The two countries, despite sharing the problem, have seldom been cooperative in solving it. They have shared information but have not moved to form business ties or ink deals to overcome the issue. Korean scientists say although they have explained that Chinese fine dust attributes to air pollution in Korea, their Chinese counterparts have never admitted in official meetings how much damage this has caused in Korea.

"If the level of environmental technologies of the U.S., Japan or Germany were second to none, those of Korea can be compared to 70 to 80 percent of the former and China 50 to 60 percent," said Kim, explaining that the difference in technological advancement and the two governments' headlong pursuit of business interests prevent them from seeking a joint solution to the problem. "Would China want to cooperate with Korea or with the U.S., Japan or Germany?"

A key is setting up an effective official roundtable where the two nations can regularly meet to discuss the issue, like the "Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution" by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe or the U.S.-Canada and Mexico air quality agreements. China and Korea, despite sharing an air pollution problem, haven't reached such diplomatic ground yet. Kim said doing so is "near impossible."

"The gap between the economy sizes of the two countries is too big compared to European countries," Kim said. "Even if Korea wished to provide economic help to China, it would be almost meaningless to China's gigantic market.

"But we can offer China technologies. Then they can work together rather than compete against each other."

ACEN is the leading Korean player in the field. It is the only Korean company whose air monitoring and analyzing technologies were acknowledged by the Chinese government's "Integrated, Intelligent and International Platform for Environmental Technology" (3iPET) and selected as one of the nation's top 100 environmental technologies to be employed from 2016 until 2018.

"We will conduct a demonstration project in the Chinese city of Wuhan in August, where we will oversee air quality inside a semiconductor factory operated by a state-run environmental company based in Beijing," Song said.

China's anti-air pollution policies are more stringent than Korea's. China's communist central government can force private companies to shut down. But the companies are protected by provincial governments' tight regulations ― like one that bans vehicles registered in Tianjin from entering Beijing without a permit ― so the governments' economies can feed on the companies.

"Protecting the environment is all about regulations," Song said, adding that people who do not like the cost of going green are still reluctant always to abide by the regulations.

"The two countries' understanding on the issue must change, discarding business approaches and trying to solve it together."